
Class CL.fe_8-0_ 



/>fe 



Can the Democratic Party bo Safely Intrusted 
Administration of the Government? 



with the 



SPEECH OF 

HON. JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

ol^ OK OHIO. ^ ^^, 

1^ 



oS 



111 tiic House o[ Representatives, Fridav, Aupst 4, 1876, 



The Foubc bciriKtn Cominitloi' of the Whole 
on I Hi bill (11. U. No. •250J) to tiunsfvr the con- 
duct of liuli;in allUirs from the Interior Ue- 
pavtiui'ui \o the Wiir Department — 

Mr. (tARFIELI) said : 

Mr. CuAiUMA.v : I regret that the speei^h of 
the geutlemau from Mississippi [ Mr. Lamak] 
has uot yet appeared in the Record, so that 
I miglit have had its full aud authentic text 
before olleriug ui.y own remarks in re))ly. 
But hii propositions were so clearly and so 
Tery ably stated, tbe doctrines that run 
through it were so logically connected, it 
will be my own fault if 1 fail to understand 
;)!id api")reciate the general scope and purpose 
' his speech. 

In the out-et, I desire lor myself and for 
a majority, at least, of those for whom I 
speak, to express my gratitude to the gentle- 
man lor all that ])ortion of his speech which 
had iur its object the removal of the preju- 
dices and iiukindl.v feelings that have arisen 
among citizens of the Republic, in conse- 
'iUeuce of the late war Whatever faults 
the speech may have, its author expresses 
an earnest desire to make progrees in the 
direction of a better understanding between 
the North aud the South ; and iir that it 
meets my most hearty concurrence and ap- 
proval. 

1 will attempt to state briefly what I un- 
derstand to l>e the logic of the gentleman's 
-Speech, lie sets out svilh deploring the evils 
of parly, and exjjressing the belief that the 
great mass of the American people are tired 
of much that belongs to party; and, looking 
beyond aud above mere pai'ty prejudices aud 
passions, tliey greatly desire to remove pub- 
lic corruptions, and reform the manifold er- 
lors and evils of administration and legisla- 
fion ; that those errors and evils cons'sl 
mainly of two thiugs : First, of a genernlly 
corrupt .stale of puljlic adiuiuistration ; and 
se«ond, of a deplorable stfite of the civil ser- 
vice ; that this state of aflairs is buttressed 
aud maintaine<l by an enormous army of 
U)0,OiJli civi) ofli^-e-holders and 100,0. lO more j 
expectants for office: aud that because of' 



I this vast force the people have hitherto beeu 
I unable to make the reforms they desirxy. 
This is his major piemise. 
1 The next point, his minor premise, is that 
: the Republican party is incapable of effect- 
ing the great reforms which the people de- 
I sire; and his conclusion from these jiremises 
is that the Democratic party ought to be 
! brought into power in the coming election. 
I This wns the summary, and, 1 may say, 
! abrupt, conclusion of his reasoning. The 
I gentleman seemed to be aware thai tliere 
j might be some apprehensions in the minds 
I of the people thaf it would not, quite yet, 
I be safe to recall the Democratic party to 
power; and he endeavored to quiet those ap- 
I prehensions by stating in the first place that 
i there need be no fear that the South, lately 
I in rebellion, would again control the Gov- 
ernment ; tliat they were prostrated ; that 
their institutions had heen overthrown ; that 
their industries liad been broken up; tliat in 
their weak and brokeu. condition there need 
be no fear that they would again be placed 
at the head of public affairs; and, finally, 
that the South has united with the Demo- 
eratic party uot from choice, but forced to it 
by inexorable necessity as tlieir only means 
of protection 

In the second place, there was apprelien 
sion, he said, tliat the Democracy, if they 
came into power, would not preserve the 
beneficent results of the war. But lie as- 
sures us that this fear is groundless ; that 
the people of tlie South have no aspirations 
which are uot bounded by the horizon ot 
the Union ; that they, as well as the Deinoc 
racy of the North, accept, honestly aud 
sincerely, the great results of the war ; and 
that they can be trusted to preserve all the 
good that has been gained. 

Again he says it is feared, on the i)art of 
many, that the colored race, lately enslaved, 
will not be safe in the full enjoyment of all 
the 1 ights resulting from the war an'l guar- 
anteed by the ameudmeiits to the Constitu- 
tion. This he also assures us is a ground- 



E^^o 



SPEECH OF HON. JAMES A. GARFi >f>. 



Z^ 



le39 fear, because tbe people of the South ' 
understaud the colored race, appreciate their i 
qualities, and are on such a footing of friend- 
ship and regard that they are in fact better 
fitted to meet the wants of that people and 
help them along in the way of civilization, 
enlightenment, and peace, than those who 
are further removed from such knowledge. , 

lie emphasizes the statement that tlie 
South cheerfully accepts the results of the 
war ; and admits that that much good has | 
been achieved by the Republican party, i 
which ought to be preserved. 1 was grati- j 
fiedtohear the gentleman speak of Lincoln ; 
as "the illustrious author of the great act 
of emancipation." That admission will be 
welcomed everywhere by those who believe 
in tlie justice and wisdom of that great act. 
While speaking of the condition of the 
South and its wants he deplores two evils 
wliich afflict that portion of our country: 
First, F»*deral supervision ; and second, ne- 
gro ascendency in its political affairs. In 
. that connection, it will be remembered, he 
"i quoted from John Stuart Mill and from Gib- 
bon ; the one, to show that the most deplor- 
able form of government is where the slave 
governs ; and from the other, to show the 
evils of a government which is in alien hands. 
Tlie gentleman represented the South as 
sutfering the composite evils depicted by 
both tliese great writers. That I may be 
sure to do him justice I quote a paragraph 
from the Associated Press report of his 
speech : 

The Inevitable effect of that reconstruction 
policy li;i<l been to draw one race to its sup- 
pori iuia ilrivo llie oilier race to its opposi- 
tion. Uu quoted (jiibbou, the liistorian, as say- 
iMji that tliu most absurd and oppressive sys- 
tem ott^ovcniinent wiijch could be conceived 
Of is lliaL which subjects the native of a 
country to the domination of his slave. He 
also (n'lotod trom JoMn Stuart Mill to the 
ell'eol tliat when a government is afliniuis- 
tore<l by rulers not responsible to the people 
KOvenic'l, but to some other community, it 
id one ot t'le worst of conceivable govern- 
mcius, anil he said that the hideous system 
eslabli-iln-d in the South i.s a composite of 
tho-o two vicious systems. The people are 
auDject <1 to the domination of their fo.mer I 
slaves, and are ruled over by people whose 
constituents were not the people tor whom 
they should act, but the Federal Government. 

Now, I have stated —of course very briefly, 
but I hope with entire fairness — the scope 
of the very able speech to which we listened. 
In a word it is this : the Republican party is 
oppressing the South; negro suflfrage is a 
grievous evil ; there are serious corruptions 
in pnblic affairs in the national legislation 
and Administration ; the civil service of the 
countiy especially needs great and radical 
reform ; and therefore the Democratic party 
ought to be placed in control of the Govern- 
ment at this time by the election of Tilden 
and Hendricks. 

It has not been my habit, and it is not my 
desire, to discuss mere party politics in this 
great legislative forum. And 1 shall do so 



now only in so far as a fair review of tho gen- 
tleman's speech requires. My remarks shall 
be responsive to his ; and I shall discuss 
party history and party policy only as the 
logic of his speech leads into that domain. 

From most of the premises of the gentle- 
man, as matters of fact and history, I dis- 
sent : some of them are undoubtedly correct. 
But, for the sake of argument only, admit- 
ting that all bis premises are correct, I deny 
that his conclusion is warranted by his 
premises ; and, before I close I shall at- 
tempt to show that the good he seeks can- 
not be secured by the ascendency of the 
Democratic party at this time. 

Before entering upon that field, however, 
I must notice this remarkable omission in the 
logic of his speech. Although he did state 
that the country might consider itself free 
from some of the dangers which are appre- 
hended as the result of Democratic ascen- 
dency, he did not, as I remember, by any 
word attempt to prove the fitness of the De- 
mocracy as a political organization to accom- 
plish the reforms which he so much desires ; 
and without that affirmative proof of fitness 
his argument is necessarily an absolute fail- 
ure. 

It is precisely that fear which has not 
only made the ascendency of the Democratic 
party so long impossible, but has made it 
incompetent to render that service so neces- 
sary to good government — the service of 
maintaining the position of a wise and hon- 
orable opposition to the dominant party. 
Often the blunders and faults of the Repub- 
lican party have been condoned by the peo- 
ple because of the violent, reactionary, and 
disloyal spirit of the Democracy. 

He tells us that is one of the well-known 
lessons of political history and philosophy ; 
that the opposition party comes in to pre- 
serve and crystalize the measures which their 
antagonists inaugurated ; and that a conser- 
vative opposition party is better fitted to ac- 
complish such a work than an aggressive rad- 
ical party who roughly pioneered the way 
and brought in the changes. And to apply 
this maxim to our own situation he tells us 
that the ditferences between the Republican 
and Democratic parties upon the issues 
which led to the war and those which grew 
out of it, were rather ditl'erences of time than 
of substance ; that the Democracy followed 
more slowly in the Republican path, but 
have at last arrived by prudent and consti- 
tutional method.i ai the same results ; and 
hence they will be sure to guard securely 
and cherish faithfully what the Republicans 
gained by reckless and turbulent methods. 
There is some truth in these "glittering 
generalities," but^ as applied to our present 
situation, they are entitled only to the con- 
sideration which we give to the bright but 
fantastic pictures of a Utopian dream. 

I share all tJiat gentleman's aspirations 



BPEECn OF HON. JAMES A. O \RFIELD. 



^for ppaoH, for good government at the South ; i 
^ and I bf lieve I can safelj assure him that 
pj the great luajoiity of tlie nation shares tlie [ 

same aspirations. IJiil lie will allow me to 
^ /say that he has not fully state<i the elements 
^of tlie great problem to be solved by the ' 
Vj statesmanship of to-day. The actual field 
is much broader than the view he has taken. 
And before we can agree that the remedy he 
proposes is an adequate one, we must take 
in the whole IJeld. tompreliend all the condi- 
tions of the problem, and then see If his 
remedy is sulBcient. The change he pro- 
poses is not like the ordiniry change of a 
mini-try in England when the Government 
is defeated on a tax bill or some routine 1 
measure of legislation, lie proposes to turn 
over to the custody and management of the 
Government to a party which baa persist- 
ently and with the greatest bitterness re- 
sisted all the great changes of the last fifteen 
years, changes which were the necessary re- 
sults if a vast revolusion — a revolution in 
national polii'^', in social and political ideas 
— a revolution whose causes were not the 
work of a day ncr of a year, but of genera- 
tions and centuries. The scope and charac- 
ter of that mighty revolution must form the 
basis of our judgment when we inquire 
whether such a change as he proposes is safe 
and wise. 

In discnssing his proposition we must not 
forget that as the result of this resolution 
the South, after the great devastations of 
war, the great loss of life and treasure, the 
overthrow of its social and industrial sys- 
tem, was called upon to confront the new 
and difficult problem of two races ; one just 
released from centuries of slavery, and the 
other a cultivated, brave, proud, imperious 
race, to be brought together on terms of 
equality before the law. New, difficult, 
delicate, o,nd dangerous questions bristle 
out from every point of that problem. 

But that is not all of the situation. On 
the other hand, we see the North, after 
leaving its 350,000 dead upon the field of 
battle and bringi.ig home its 500,000 maimed 
and wounded to be cared for, crippled in its 
industries, staggering under the tremendous i 
burden of public and private debt, and both 
North and youth weighted with unparalleled 
burlens and losses — the whole nation sutler- 
iug from that loosening of the bonds of 
social order which always follows a great 
war and from the resulting corruption both | 
in the public and the private life of the | 
people. These, Mr. Chairman, con.Hitute 
the vast field which we must survey in order 
to find the path which will soonest lead our 
beloved country to the highway of peace, of 
liberty, and prosperity. Peace from the 
shock of battle ; the higher peace of our 
streets, of our homes, of our equal rights 
we must make secure by making the con- 
quering ideas of the war everywhere domi- 
nant and permanent. 



With all my heart I join with thfi gentle- 
man in rejoicing that — 

The wiir-drinns throb no longer and the l>at. 
lle-rtagr "e furled, 

and I look forw..d with joy and hope to th** 
day when our brave people, one in heart, 
one in their aspirations for freedom and 
peace, shall see that the <larkness through 
which we have tiaveleil was a part of that 
stern but beneficent discipline by which the 
Great Disposer of events has been leading 
us on to a higher and nobler national life. 

15ut such a result can be reaclieil only by 
comprehending the whole meaning of the 
revolution through which we have passed 
and are still passing. I say still passing; 
for I remember that after the battle of arms 
comes the battle of history. The cause that 
triumphs in the field does not always tri- 
umph in history. And those who carried 
the war for union and equal and universal 
freedom to a victorious issii.e can never 
safely relax their vigilance until the ideas 
for which they fought have become em- 
bodied in the enduring forms sf individual 
and national life. 

lias this been done f Not yet. 

I ask the gentleman in all plainness of 
speech, and yet in all kindness, is he cor- 
rect in his statement that the conquered 
party accept the results of the war? liven 
if they do I remind the gentleman that 
accept is not a very strong word. I go 
further. I ask him if the Democratic party 
have adopted the results of the war? Is 
it not asking too much of human nature 
to expect such unparalleled changes to be 
not only accepted, but, in so short a time, 
adopted by men of strong and independent 
opinions ? 

The antagonisms which gave rise to the 
war and grew out of it were not born in a 
day, nor can they vanish in a night. 

Mr. Chairman, great iileas travel slowly, 
and for a time, noiselessly as the gods whose 
feet were shod with wool. Our war of inde- 
pendence was a war of ideas, of ideas evolved 
out of two hundred years of slow and silent 
grpwth. When, one hundred years ago, 
our fathers announced as self-evident truths 
the declaration that all men are created 
equal, and the only just i>ower o( govern- 
ments is derived from the consent of the 
governed, they uttered a tloctrine that no 
nation had ever adopted, that not one king- 
dom on the earth tlu-n believed. Vet to our 
fathers it was so plain that they would not 
debate it. They announced it as a truth 
"i-elf-evident." 

Whence came the immortal truths of the 
Declaration ? To me, this w*as, for years, 
the riddle of our history. I have searched 
long and patiently through the books of the 
doclriniiire.s to fiuil the germs from which the 
Declarationof Independence sprang. 1 found 
hints in Locke, in Uobbes, in Rousseau, and 



SPEECH OF UON= JAMES A. GARFIELD. 



Funelon; but they were only the liiuts of 
dreameis aud pliilosopherd. The great doc- 
trines of the Declaration germinated in the 
hearts of our fathers, and were developed 
under the new iuliuences of this wilderness 
world, by the same subtle mystery which 
brings forth the rose from the germ of the 
rose-tree. Unconsciously to themselves, the 
great truths were growing under the new 
conditions until, like the century plant, they 
blossomed into Ihe matchless beauty of the 
Declaration of Independence, whose fruitage, 
increased aud increasing, we enjoy tc-day. 

It will not do, Mr. Chairman, to speak of 
the gigantic revolution through which we 
have lately passed as a thing to be adjusted 
and Settled by a change of administration. 
It was ovclical, epochal, century-wide, and 
to be studied in its broad and grand per- 
spective — a revolution of even wider scope, 
so far as time is i-oucerued, than tbe Revolu- 
tion of 1776. We have been dealing with 
elements aud forces which have been at 
work on this continent more than two hun- 
dred and lifty years. I trust I shall be 
excused if I take a few moments to trace 
Home of the leading phases of the great strug- 
gle. And in doing so, I beg gentlemen to 
tsee that the subject itself lifts us into a 
region where the individual sinks out of 
sight and is absorbed in the mighty current 
of great events. It is not the occasion to 
award praise or pronounce condemnation. 
In such a revolution men are like insects, 
that fret aud toss in the storm, but are 
S'wept on ward by the resistless movements of 
»;lemeuis beyond their control. I speak of 
this revolution not to praise the men who 
aided it, nor to censure the men who resisted 
it, but as a force to be studied, as a mandate 
to be obeyed. 

In the year 1620 there were planted, upon 
this continent, two ideas irreconcilably hos- 
tile to each other. Ideas are the great war- 
liors of the world; and a war that has no ideas 
behind it is simply brutality. The two ideas 
were lauded, one at Plymouth Rock from 
the Mayllower, and the other from a Dutch 
brig at Jamestown, Virginia. Cue was the 
old doctrine of Luther, that private judg- 
ment, in politics as well as religion, is the 
right and duty of every man; and the other 
taat capital should own labor, that the negro 
had no rights of manhood, aud the white 
man miglit justly buy, own, and sell him 
and his oll'spring torever. Thus freedom 
and equality ou the one hand, and on the 
otliei' the slavery of one race aud the domi- 
nation ot auother, were the two germs plant- 
ed ou this contiui^nt. In our vast expanse 
Mt wilderness, for a long lime, there was 
room for botii, aud iheir advocates began 
the race across the continent, each develop- 
ing tiie social and political institutions of 
their choice. IJoth had vast interests iu 
common ; aud for a long time neither was 



conscious of the fatal antagonisms that were 
developing. 

For nearly two centuries there was no 
serious collision; but when the continent 
began to till up, and the people began to 
jostle against each other ; when the Round- 
head aud the Cavalier came near enough to 
measure opinions, the irreconcilable charac 
ter of the two doctrines began lo appear. 
Many conscientious men studied the subject, 
andcametothebelief thatslavery was a crime, 
a sin, or as Wesley said, "the sum of all 
villainies." This belief dwelt iu small 
minorities for a long time. It lived in the 
churches aud vestries, but later found its 
way into the civil and political orgaulzatioue 
of the country, and finally found its way 
into this Chamber. A few brave, clear- 
sighted, far-seeing men announced it liere 
a little more than a generation ago. A pre- 
decessor of mine, Joshua R. Giddings, fol- 
lowing the lead of John Quincy Adams of 
Massachusetts, almost alone, held up the 
banner ou this door, and, from year to year, 
comrades came to his side. Through evil 
and through good report he pressed the 
question upon the conscience of the nation; 
and bravely stood iu his place iu this House, 
until his white locks, like the plume ot 
Henry of Navarre, showed where the battle 
for freedom raged most fiercely. 

And so the contest continued; the support- 
ers of slavery believing honestly and sin- 
cerely that slavery was a divine institution; 
that it louud its high sanctions in the living 
oracles of God and iu a wise political philos- 
ophy; that it was justified by the necessi- 
ties of their situation; aud that slaveholders 
were missionaries to the dark sous of Africa, 
to elevate and bless them. We are so far 
past the passions of that early time that we 
can now study the progress of the struggle 
as a great and inevitable development, with- 
out sharing iu the crimination and recrimi- 
nation that attended it. If both sides could 
have seen that it was a contest beyond their 
control; if both paitties could have realized 
the truth that "unsettled questions have no 
pity for the repose of nations," much less 
for the fate of political parties, the bitter- 
ness, the sorrow, the tears, and the blood 
might have been avoided. But we walked 
iji the darkness, our ])aths obscured by the 
smoke of the coufiict, each following his own 
convictions through ever-increasing fierce- 
ness, until the debate culminated in "the 
last argument to which kings resort." 

This conflict of (opinion was not merely 
one of sentimental feeling ; it involved our 
whole political system ; it gave rise to two 
radically diUerent theories of the nature of 
oar Government: the JMorth believing aud 
holding that we were a nation, the South in- 
sisting that we were only a confederation of 
sovereign States, and insisting that each 
Stale had the right, at its own discretioii, to 



•^PKrCM. Of HON, JA.MKH A. GARFIELD. 



break the Union, and constantly threatMning 
seoessiou wli«re the lull rights of slavery 
were not acknowledged. 

ThuH the defense and Hggraudizenieut of 
slavery and the hatred of abolitionism be- 
came not only the central idea of the Demo- 
cratic party, but Its master passion; a i)assiou 
lutensilied and iutlamed by twenty-live years 
of tierce political contest, which had not' only 
driven from its ranks all those who preferred 
freedom to slavery, but had absorbed all the 
extreme pro-slavery elements of the fallen 
Whig party. Over against this was arrayed 
the Republican party, asserting the broad 
doctrines of uatioualiiy and loyalty, insisting 
that no State had a rigiit to secede, that 
secession was treason, and demanding that 
the institution of slavery should be restricted 
lo the limits of the States where it already 
existed, iiut here and there many bolder 
and more radical thinkers declared, with 
Wendell Phillips, that there never could be 
anion and peace, freedom and prosperity, 
until we were willing to see John Hancock 
under a black skin. 

That we may see more clearly the opinions 
which were tt» be settled by war i will read 
two passages from the Congressional Globe, 
□ot lor the purpose of making a personal 
point against any man, but simply to show 
where honest men stood when that contest 
was approaching its crisis. 1 read from a 
speech made on the litth day of December, 
iooy, by the distinguished gentleman irom 
Mississippi, [Mr. Sinoleto>-,J then and now 
a member of this iiou.>-e : 

TJie Soutn will never suOmil tu that state of 
tlijugs. It mutters not what evils come upon 
us; iL inatLeis not iiow deep we liave lo wade 
turougli oiood; we are bouuU to Keep our 
slaves in their present position. And let me 
asli you, wluLi good wouui you luiii>; to tUe 
slaves uy tuis process of al)Oiition? You may 
possibly have ilie oljjcct in view of beiieiitmg 
lUe slave o*' beneflliug Die wUitc lace or bolU; 
but suppose >ou couid carry out your inans 
auUcoiitine us toourpre^cut aiea,audsiipi>ose 
that ine iusiiiudou of slavery sliould abolish 
Itself, wbat would you liavc done? You know 
It is impossilne for us to live on terius of 
equality witn lUein. It isnotto besupposed for 
momentlUut wecandoso. The result would 
be a .wuv between ine races, winch would pt;r- 
haps luvoive the uuer annihilation of one or 
the other; and rhus you see that instead of 
beneii ting either you would have brought dis- 
aster upon both. 

Jjut i tcii you here, to-day, that the institu- 
tion oi slavery must besusiainei.l. The&outh 
has matle up its mind to keep the black race 
in bouOage. If we are not permitted lo flo 
this insiUe of the Linion, 1 tell you that it will 
be done ouiside ol it. Yes, si)-, and we will 
expand thi5 iiisuiution ; we do nut intend to 
be confined withiu our present limits: and 
there are not men enoUfi;h m ali your borders 
t' coerce three million armed men in the 
ci0Ui.n, and prevent their going into the sur- 
rounding Territories. 

in the course of that debate, the same 
gentleman said : 

1 am one ot those who have .said, and here 
repeat it. If the black Kepublican party elect 
a President i am lor dissolving ilie Union. 

I have no doubt the gentleman fairly and 



I faithfully repreHented the opinions of his 
State. Not long before the date of this 
speech, it will he remembered that two dis- 
tinguished members of the Republican party 
had uttered their opinions on this (jue.'^tion. 
Mr. Lincoln had sai.l that it was impossihie 

I for a country to remain partly slave and 
partly free. And Mr. Seward had sai I that 
there was an irrepressible conflict between 
the systems of free and slave labor, which 
could never cease until one or the other was 
wholly overthrown. The Republican i)arty, 
however, disclaimed all right or purpose to 
interfere with slavery in the States; yet they 
expressed the hope that the time would come 
when there should he no slave under our Uag. 
In response to that particular opinion, the 
distinguished gentleman from Mississippi, 
[Mr. 1..AM.A.K, ] then a member of this House, 
on the 23d day of December, 1859, said this: 
1 was upon the floor of the Senate when 
your ureal loader, William II. Howard, an- 
nounced that startling programme of anti- 
slavery sentiment and action. « » » 
And, sir, iu his exultation he exclaimed— for 
1 heard hiui myself— that he hoped to see ihu 
day when th. r**-wouid not be tho foot-piint of 
a sintjie slave upon this continent. A\n\ when 
he uttered this atrocious sentiment, his form 
seemed to dilate, his pale, thin face, furrowed 
by the lines of tliouf<ht and evil passions, 
kindled with malignant triumph, ami lii.« eye 
glowed and giaied uj)on .Southern .Senators as 
though the fires of hell were burning in his 
heart. 

1 have read this passage to mark the height 
to which the antagonism had risen in 18;)9. 
And this passage enables us to m^aaure the 
progress be has since made. 

i mark it here as one of the notable signs 
of the time, that the gulf which intervenes 
between the position then occupied by the 
gentleman from Mississippi and the position 
he occupies to day is so deep, so vast, that 
it indicates a progress worthy of all praise. 
I congratulate him and the country that, 
in so short a time, so great a change has 
been possible. 

Now 1 ask the gentleman if he is quite 
sure, as a matter of fact, that tho Democratic 
party, its Southern as well as its Northern 
wing, have followed his own illustrious and 
worthy example in the vast progress he has 
made since 1859 ? He assures us that the 
transformation has been so complete that 
the nation can sately trust all the most pre- 
cious fruits of the war in the hands of that 
party who stood with him in ls59. If that 
be true, 1 rejoice at it with all my heart; but 
the gentleman must par<lon me if 1 ask him 
to assist my wavering f.ajth by some evidence, 
some consoling proofs. When did the great 
transformation take place ? Certainly not 
within two years after the delivery of the 
speech I have quoted; for two years from that 
time the contest had risen mtich higher; it 
had risen to the jioiut of open, terrible, and 
determined war. Did the change come dur- 
ing the war ? 0, no; for in the four terrible 
years ending iu 1SG5, every resource of 



SPEECH OP HON. JAMES A. GAEFIKLO. 



courage and power that the Southern States 
could muster was employed not only to save 
slavery but to destroy the Uuion. So the 
traust'oruiation had not occurred in 18(i5. 
U'heu did it occur ? Aid our anxious in- 
quiry, for the nation ought to be sure that 
the great change has occurred before it can 
safely trust its destinies to the Democratic 
"arty. Did it occur in the first epoch of re- 
«?oostruetion — the two years immediately 
folJowiug the war? During in«,. period the 
attempt was made to restore gi ^rnments in 
the South on the basis of tjc white vote. 
.Military control was held generally: but the 
white population of the Southern Spates were 
invited to elect their own Legislatuies and 
establish provisional governments. 

In the laws, covering a period of two and a 
half years, 18155, 186G, and a portion of 1867, 
enacted by those Legislatures, we ought to 
find proof of the transformation if it had then 
occurred. Wliat do we find? What we 
should naturally «xpect: that a people, ac- 
customed to the domiuatien of slavery, re- 
enacted in almost all of the Southern States, 
and notably in the States of Mississippi and 
Louisiana, laws limiting and restricting the 
liberty of the colored man: vagrant laws and 
peonage laws, whereby negroes were sold at 
auction for the payment of a paltry tax or 
fine, and held in a slavery as real as the 
slavery of other days. I believe that this 
was true of nearly all »f the Southern States; 
so that the experiment of allowing the white 
population of the South to adjust that very 
question proved a frightful failure; and then 
it was that the National Congress intervened. 
They proposed an act of reconstruction, an 
act which became a law on the 2d of March, 
1867. 

And what was that act ? Gentlemen of 
the South, you are too deeply schooled in 
philosophy to take any umbrage at what I 
shall now say, for I am dealing only with 
history. You must know, and certainly do 
know, that the great body of the nation 
which had carried the war to triumph and 
success knew that the eleven States that 
had opposed the Union had plunged their 
people into crime; a crime set down in the 
law — a law signed by President Washing- 
ton — at the very top of the catalogue of 
crimes: the crime of treason and all that fol- 
lows it. You certainly know that, under that 
law, every man who voluntarily took up 
arms against the Union could have been 
tried, convicted, and hanged as a traitor to 
his country. But I call your attention to the 
fact that the conquering nation said, in this 
great work of reconstruction, "We will do 
nothiug for revenge, everything for perma- 
nent peace;" and you know there never was 
& trial for treason in this country during the 
wV.ole of the struggle nor after it; no man 
v^jJi executed for treason; no man was tried. 
Hitr« wftB no oxpattiation, no exile, no con- 



■ fiscation after the war. The only revenge 
I which the conquering nation gratified was 
I this : In saying to the South "You may come 
i back to your full place in the Union wben 
j yott do these things: join with the other 
States in putting into the Constitution a pro- 
vision that the national debt shall never be 
repudiated; that your rebel war debt s.hall 
never be paid, and that all men, without re- 
I gard to race or color, shall stand equal be- 
fore the law; not in sullrage, but in civil 
rights; that these great guarantees of liberty 
and public faith shall be lifted above the 
reach of political parties, above the legisla- 
tion of States, above the legislation of Con- 
gress, and shall be set in the serene firma- 
ment of the Constitution, to shine as lights 
forever and forever. And under tiiat equal 
sky, under the light of that equal sun, all 
men, of whatever race or color, shall stand 
equal before the law." 

That was the plan of reconstruction offered 
to those who had been in rebellion, oflfered 
by a generous and brave nation ; and I chal- 
lenge the world to show an act of equal gen- 
erosity to a conquered people. What answer 
did it meet ? By the advice of Andrew John- 
son, a bad adviser, backed by the advice of 
the Northe'-n Democracy, a still worse advi- 
ser, ten of the eleven States lately in rebel- 
lion contemptuously rejected the plan of re- 
construction embraced in the fourteenth 
amendment of th<^ Constitution. They would 
have none of it ; they had been invited by 
their Northern allies to stand out, and were 
told that when the Democracy came into 
power they should be permitted to come 
back to their places without guarantees or 
conditions. 

This brings us to 1868. Had the trans- 
formation occurred then ? For remember, 
gentlemen, I am searching for the date of 
the great transformation similar to that 
which has taken place in the gentleman 
from Mississippi. We do not find it in 1868. 
On the contrary, in that year, we find Frank 
P. Blair, of Missouri, writing these words, 
which a few days after they were written 
gave him the nomination for the Vice Presi- 
dency on the Democratic ticket — 

There is but one way to restore government 
and toe Constitu ion ; anil tluitls for the Pres- 
ident elect to declare all these acts— 

And the constitutional amendment with 
them — 

to declare all these acts null and void, compel 
the army to undo its usurpai ions at the South, 
and disperse the carpet-ljag State govern- 
ments and allow the wliite people to reorgan- 
ize their own governments and elect Senators 
and Representatives. 

I Because lie wrote that letter he was nom- 
inated for Vice-President by the Democratic 
party. Therefore, as late as July, 1868, the 
transformation had not occurred. 

Had it occurred in 1872 ? In 1871 and 
1872 all the anieudments of the Constitution 
had been adopted, against the stubborn ro- 



SPEECn OF HON. JAMES A. GARFIELD. 



sistance of the Northern and Southern De- 
mocracy. I call you to witness that, with 
the exception of three or four Democratic 
Representatives who voted for the abolition 
of slavery, the three great amendments, the 
thirteenth, the fourteenth, and the fifteenth, 
met the determined and united opposition of 
the Democracy of this country. Kach of the 
amendments, now so praised by the gentle- 
man, was adopted against the whole weight 
of your resistance. And two years after the 
adoption of the last amendment, in many of 
your State platforms, they were declared to 
be null and vo'id. 

In 1S71 and 1872 occurred thronghout 
the South those dreadful scenes enacted by 
the Kuklux organizations, of which I will 
say only this, that a man facile princeps 
amoag the Democrats of the slave-liolding 
States, Reverdy Johnson, who was sent down 
to defend those wiio were indicted for their 
crimes, held up his hands in horror at the 
shocking barbarities that had been perpetra- 
ted by his clients upon negro citizens. I re- 
fer to the evidence of that eminent man as 
a sufficient proof of the character of that 
great conspiracy against the freedom of the 
colored race. So the transformation had not 
come iu the days of Kuklux of 1871 and 
1872. 

Had it come in 1S73 and the beginning of 
1874 f Had it come in the State of Mississippi f 
Had it come iu one quarter of tlie States lately 
in rebellion .' Here is a report from an honor- 
able committee of this House, signed by two 
gentlemen who are still members, Mr. Conobr 
and Mr. Hdrlbdt — a report made as late as 
December, 1874, iu which there is disclosed, 
by innumerable witnesses, the proof that the 
White Line organization, an armed military 
organization formed within the Democratic 
party, had leagued themselves together to 
prevent the enjoyment of suffrage and equal 
rights by the colored men of the South. 
Without detaining the House to read them 
now, I will quote two or three paragraphs 
from that report, dated December 14, 1874, 
and printed House Document No. 265. 

THK "WHITB LINE." 

This Interior oaganization lias not yet as- 
sumed (leflnilely in the SliUe of Mississippi 
sucli precise form and so distinct an existence 
as in llio Slate of Louisimni, but is unques- 
tionably nil extension Into Mississippi of the 
"White l^oatjue" organization, whose head- 
quarters are In Now Orleans. In Warren 
county It Is sometimes called the " « hite 
Line," and by that name is familiarly spotten 
Of hy the Icadiuf^ papers of Vicltshiirij, as well 
as by some of the prominent witnesses before 
tliis com mil ten. it Is also ktio>vn as " people's 
clnljs,' but in all Instances the formation of Hie 
clubs or civil oreanlzation Is accompanied by 
establishing wiihln the clubs ihoinsei Ves a 
military organization, officered, ejuippod, and 
armed. 

Tlius the clubs and the taxpayers' league 
are opm associations, apparently directeil to- 
ward objects In which all citizuna might law- 
fully unite, but controlled from within by the 
military and partisan organ izaiions whose 
purposes are special and lawful. 



The purposes of these chibsor While I.Ino 
companies are I hose, as they are openly avow- 
Oil or secretly cheriMlu^il : 

1. They ai-e Vlrji^ to makea ceii'^ns and enroll- 
ment of" a II tliti white men Iu the .*ila'.<'. 

2. To Incorponiie Into the Intrrtor military 
', organlzaiionsall the whiles who will Join wilU 

I thein. 

I 3. To set aslrle. by whatever means may bo 

1 necessary, the idfctloii of colorcil men lo of- 
fice, and to niilliry In practice the en iblln^ 

I and eiitorceui<-nt acts of Congress, graidluK 
and enforcing tlie right of all cil Iz(mi-<, wlili- 
out distinction of color, to hold oiUces, If 

I properly elected to them. 

j 4. To allow none but while men to be elected 
to ofllce or to hold oJllce. 

And how was it about the same time, and 
even later, in other States? Here is a report 
upon Louisiana, the report from whiih the 
gentleman quoted, a report tliat exhibits llie 

, same condition of affairs, signed by the geu- 
tlem&n who sits in front of me, [Mr. Hoak.] 

I Although by a minority of the committee, it 

I is a report of great power and of indubitable 

I truth. 1 quote from page 18: 

The White Ijcague Is an organization which 
exists in New Oneans. and contains at least 
from twenty five hundred to three tlionsaiul 
members, armed, drilled, ami ofTlcered as a 

j military organization. Organizalions beating 

' the same name extend throughout many pariu 

I of the Stale. 

I •••••• * 

I On the lUh of September, 1874, It arose upon 
I and attacked the police of the city, the pro- 
! text of the attack being the sidzuie of arms 
{ which it had Imported fioin the North; and 
having defeated them with considerable 
j slaughter. It took possession of the State- 
house, overthrew the Stale gov(!rnmenl, and 
! Installed a ne»v governor in oince, and kept 
I him in power until the United States inlor- 
! fered. This rising was planned bcforehaiul. 
j ••«•»* » 

j The White League of New Orleans Itsol f was 
j anti Is a constant menace to the Uepubllcumi 
of the whole State. 

i We cannot doubt that the elTect of all these 
t things was to prevent a full, free., and fair 
election, and to lntinii<lalo the colo^'cd votors 
I and the white Republicans. 

S« the transformation had not occurred in 
August, 1874. I come down now to IS75, to 
the late autumn of that year, and ask if the 
transformation had then occurred. I will 
not detain the House by reading the testi- 
mony of the cloud of witnesses which gathers 
around me, but will print a few specimens 
of the proef, most of them relating to the 
recent State election iu Mississippi. While 
I say, to the honor of the gentleman from 
Mississippi, that in his own Slate he spoke 
against the organization of the White Line, 
it is unquestionably true that he was not 
supported by a like action on the part of the 
great mass of his political associates. With 
the permission of the House I will quote from 
a number of papers in his State, which say, 
with the utmost boldness, that though Col. 
Lamar spoke against tiie Wliite Line, and 
though the State convention ignored it, yet, 
back of the convention and back of the gen- 
tleman himself, the White Line was formed 
and carried the election, and intends iu thf 
same way to carry the next. 



SPEECH OF HON. JAMES A. GARFIELD. 



The following quotations need no comment: 
[Fi'om tlie Colutnbns (Mississippi) index, 
August, 187").] 

Already clo we see si^ns in our State of the 
good effects of the color line. Prior to its 
orgiiniziitio.i there was no harmony' or unity 
of action among tlie whites. The negroes had 
perfected their race in organizations ami 
-.vi-re able to control the politics of the State. 
The whites', after liaving artempted every 
jicheiiie to seeui'e an intelligent governniont 
and a cooperation of the ncgroe^ In this be- 
half, Misely gave it up and determined to 
organlzt' themselves as a race and meet the 
Issue that had jjresented llseU for ten years. 

Now we r<!COguize the fact that ihe State is 
most thorouglily aroused, more harmonious 
In its actions, and more determined to suc- 
ceed in the coming- election than it has been 
since the days of secession. 

So the gT and result of the color line has been 
accomphnhed in organizing tin* v/bite people 
of the State and pla ing them in a position to 
•conlrol the coming election. No other policy 
could have etTected the result. 

[From the Shubuta Times.] 

Call it what you please. Some call It the 
color line. It looks to ns like the white line, 
it shall be seen who in this emergency can 
choose to stand with the negroes as against 
the whites. Mark them. 

[From the Uandsborough Democrat.] 

Wo are in favor of the color line as a prin- 
ciple, a necebsli;y, and a policy. 

[From the Meridian Mercury.] 
Rally *>n !,he color line, boys, beyond the 
platlorm, every man to his color and colors, 
ami make these negro pretentlers to govern 
this great country to come down, else put 'em 
down. What do the young men say to the old 
men's batlle-ciy In tin* political campaign, 
"Stop across the platform, boys, and go for 
em.'' 

[From the Forest Register.] 
Thebody ofthe Democratic partv will carry 
their colors of the White Line ove"r the State. 
Some of the auxiliaries in a scout or ijush- 
whacklng mancBuver may use a mild, con- 
servaLlve face over the tiag, but still it will 
rest on a white journal. To the Radicals we 
say, ju^t superintentl your structure; we will 
raise our own liag and colors. 

The Vicksburg Herald, speaking of the 
State Democratic convention of August 9, 
1875, says : 

The color line was by common consent Ig- 
nored, it was only me.itioneil incidentally, 
and it was not "killed off" either by the 
speech of Colonel Lamar or by a vote of the 
convention. The representatives of the peo- 
ple expi'cssed Jio oiiinion on the subject. The 
convention left each counti" to manage its 
own affairs in its own way. 

Speaking of the State Democratic platform 
of August 9, ISVfi, the Columbus Index says: 

We stand on the color line, because It is 
taclily indorsed by the platform, and because 
we believe it to be" the only means of redeem- 
ing this and oilier counties from negro rule. 

Again, from the same paper : 

The necessities of the ."State of Mississippi 
recall thii Injnncilon and give emi)hasis i,o 
tlie paralicl— put none but Democi ais in office. 

We have gaine.l a great victoi-y— Hull Ruiior 
Chickamauga. Le^ us follow it up to the se- 
curing of I'e.sults. 

The wijiie people must be welded into one 
compact organization. All differenecsorojiin- 
ion, all personal aspirations, musi be settled 
within our own organization, and from its de- 
cision Uierc; must be no appeal. Otherwi.'^e 
each recuirinjf election jiroduces its disor- 
ders. 



[From the Meridian INlercury.] 

Our coi respondent at Running Water Mills 
makes his points well, liis positicnis cannot 
successlully be contradicted. The miserable 
bunglers who have put the negro in the Con- 
stitution have certainly wi'ltleii themselves 
down asses all. W.hen we accept "results of 
the war," we do )iot accept the notion of 
statesmen, out the blunders of unreasoning 
malice and stupidity, and of course we con' 
tinue to accept It only so long as we are com- 
pelled to. 

[From the Jackson Clarion.] 

Appeal after appeal has been made in vain 
to the colored people. Mo more appeals will 
be matle to them. 

[From the Alabama Examiner.] 

The present contest i-> rather a revolution 
than a political campal^iu ; it is the rebellion. 
if you see fit to apply that term. 

[From the Forest Register.] 

In this conuection we will stale that the 
white me', who ally themselves with negroes 
in this conflict n»ed not expect any better fate 
than they; fact is, they will be the first tosuf- 
fer, if the Caucasian can find them at alj 
when trouble comes. 

In July, 1875, the Raymond Gazette, whose 
editor is now a member of the Legislature, 
and which is published only eight miles froia 
Clinton, where the bloody riot of last Sep- 
tember occurred, made this startling de- 
mand : 

There are those who think that the leaders 
of the Radical party have carried this system 
of fraud and falsehoo<l just Tar enough in 
Hinds coun-ty, and that the time lias come 
when i*, should be stopped— peaceably if po.s- 
sible. forcibly If necassary. And to this end it 
is proposed that whenever a liauical pow-wow 
is to be held, the nearest anti-liadica! club ap- 
point a commiitee of ten iliscreet, uitelligent, 
and reputable citir.ens, fully Identifled with 
the interests of the neigh borlioo<l and well 
known as men of veracity, to attend as rei)re- 
sentativesof the tax-payers of the neighbor- 
liooa andthe eountj , and true friends of the 
negrous- assembled, and that whenever the 
Itatlicai speakers proceed to mislead the ne- 
gioe-, and oi)en with falsehoods and decep- 
tions and misrcpiesentations, the committee 
stop them right then and there, and compei 
them to tell truth or guit the stand. 

The Clinton riot was the d'rect outgrowth 
of this demand. What follows ? The same 
paper, of date July 26, 187(3, show.s that this 
vicious policy has been renewed in Hinds 
county, as follows : 

DEMOCRATIC CENSORS. 

The county executive committee of the 
Democrats and couseivativesofiiiiids county 
held a meeting at Raymond the other day, at 
which, on motion. It was ordered that each 
club in the county appoint a special commit- 
tee whose business it shall be to attend anv 
and every Radical meeting held in its vicin- 
ity, and that each of .said committees s.iall re- 
port to its own club and to this executive 
committee the action, attendance, andgej>e- 
ral tone and temjicr of said meeting. 

A SYSTEM OP COBRCION. 

A very general system of coercion was 
adopted throughout the .Sunthby Uen.ocratlc 
clubs and associations agreeing not to employ 
negroes who voted the ilei)ublican tirkct, not 
to iea.-e them laiui.s, nor to furnish them with 
or allow them to obtain ibr tli-unselve? any 
means of subsistence. 

The proofs of this are overwhelming. 1 
read from the Chickasaw Messenger a com- 
munication from jBuena Vista, Mississippi ; 



SPEKCn OF DON. JAMES A. OAHFIKLl*. 



KUKNA ViSTA, Miss., January 1, 187«. 
Editor Mkssjckoeu: The I'ollim iii-<'ll.<t crim- 
prises the nueduuMi tluit luivt> I)o<mi rciiori.Hl 
by the iiiembfr.s of tin- JJiit-nii Vl.sln Dfiiio- 
oialic conservative club as ilie one-i liinl ihui. 
would be leiusea lo lecoiitnict for the year 
1876. 'i ou are reqne.Hteil bv the club to publish 
their names In the Messenger. 

Uespectiullv. vours. 

C. A." M". FULLIM.VN, 
Secretary Buena Vista Deui. Con. Club. 

"Fred Crow, Frank VViulains, Dury llolll- 
uian, John Doss, Wade Pulliaui, Calvin Ulad- 
uey, Joe Moore, Henrj Jolin.-.c>ii, Anderson 
Williams, Kd. liramleii, John Pnlliani, \Uu 
Valiiant, Uay J'.nind, Wash Cliandb r. Jake 
\Valkei\ Ilenrv Woodaid, Lawson I'ulliani 
W. Huucilestone, Martin Pulliuni. Kd. Iv\le, 
Calvin Uray, John liuehanan, nan. I'uiids, 
Albert Conor, h^U. Xaihan, Jiin Pulllam,.Mmon 
Baskin, Bill Pulliam, Geo.f^e Liites, J. Feath 
orslone^ -jhadi Love, Uilliard i lelds. 

"Weare not familiar wiih the names of all the 
leading darkies in Buena Vi.-.ia, but it oecnrs to 
us that many of them do not appear upon i he 
list sent to us. W, may not understand arijjht 
the actiou of the Buena Vi'iita eluo, ■ ut our 
impression wa.« that one-tblr<l of the laborers 
were to be tliacharKeil, and tliat one-third 
should includesueii turbulent, vu-ious rascals 
as Fmdi Mcintosh, Prince llmldlesione, arul 
others who once hehl hi-ili eai-nivul in that 
section. Let MS have no 'whipijing the devil 
around the stump,' friends, but let us carry 
our ple«iges both in spirit and letter." 

Houston, Janruiry, 1876. 

Pursuant to a call of the president, the club 
met at i lie court-house ateJeveu o'clock a. m., 
VV. S. Bates presiding. 

On motion of Captain Frank Burkitt, the 
foiiowing resolutions were rea<l : 

1. That we .solemnly declare our purpose to 
rtand lo and abide by our pledges made ilur- 
U\^ the canvass, and thai we will hold in utter 
Jecestation any man Ciainiinif to be a Conser- 
vative Democrat who by any equivocations 
^baU in ihc least violate "the sacied promises 
made by us previous to the election, either as 
a club or as indlviiluals. 

■2. That at no time and under no circum- 
stances will we employ those who are regard- 
ed as leaders in the Radical party. 

i. That we will not employ :i.ny laborer who 
uas been dischargeil byany mpml)er of our 
club because of nis ,.iiSt"poli'tical course. 

4. That thi; members of Ihisclubare request- 
ed to senil into the secretary the names of all 
per .ons turned oir by them" unde the above 
resolutions, and that the executive commit tee 
of tue county is requested to pu ii»h their 
names. 

ft. That every other club in the county is 
reg[Ue>ted to take like action. 

6. That our papers aj-e requested to publish 
these resiOiuti ons and the names of p<'rsons 
sent to them by the exe«utive committee. 

V. That colored men ai-e invited to Join this 
club. 

a That this club meet the first Saturday In 
each month 

J.B. GLADXEY, Secretary. 

[From the Okolona (Mississippi) ••^lates, .Vo- 
vemljer 1>S 1875.] 

The Radical pa.iy of Mississippi contend 
rhai iniimidation won the White i-ine victory. 
It isiiot the flrs: time, neiih.i- will it be the 
lust time in whi'-h inlimirialion ha n been sue- 
cessftdlu nxed. The white men have bei-n in- 
timiualeu in times past, and we wonder which 
has the i)e-'t of the i.argain. We are so situ- 
ated that weare obliff d to IIkIu the devil wlih 
lire. Lutthe white men nin ne afraid to in- 
timidate evil-doers. Iniimidation is legitimate, 
pcr/ec ly legdimate. 

Ex-Governor Benjamin G. Humphries, of 
Mississippi, made a sp^-ech at a reunion of 
the Tliirteentli Mississippi Confederate In- 



Ifantrv, at Moridian, on the 22d of Nov«»m- 

ber, iSTf), in wliich he said : 
! We have Kurrendrred none of our convie- 

tion.1 lint/ xiill claim (lie rinlit iif lindicalion. 

In loouinjf buck at our p.isi ueilons and mo- 
jtlves,aMd the wrongs we have suH'ercd and 

are still sntlerin^c, weeonfe-.-, thutuc have no 
j reiirets for the ch"ice we made netween Ihe 
] •' hixher-lnw" license of majoi Hies In the 
\ Union and the sacred s(-eurlty of self-|«overn- 
I ment In the Slates, betw.eii "the Federal and 
I Confederate xovernnnnts. Weare n t con 
i solous oi II soiliar.\ Ucrellctlon of duly, either 

as citl/.. ns or soldiers, and feel tha"t iruili, 

reason, and lellfiion exculpate us from wron;; 

doing. We know we were rl«hl, and though 

crushetl toi'urtliwe should evi-r remember. 
i and teach our children to rememljcr, our 
{cause wasju-t! sVe are still pioud of the 

cause and glory in the fight we made. 

i After the election, the Meridian Mercury, 
I of November 2ii, IhTf), says : 

We have to contend with the blunder of the 
! fifteenth amendment while it stands as best 
I we can. Kidiculou.'j aijpeals to the leastm an.i 
I judgment of tli negro haw been tlie cause of 
( incalculable injury in the infiaiion of his van- 
ity and making liiin believe he wa-» of real 
I consequence as a governing element in tlie 
I body-politic. Now that the negro In this State 
lis down ai.d his personal seli-conceit well 
I knockeil out of him, it Is probaiily a fit titnc- 
for the white i)eople to impress upon him that 
the white people will in cuturo conirol the 
politics of this Sratt,and that lieshorldkeep 
himself in his proper sphere and leave to the 
intelligent \\ iiite man the exclusive use ol 
statecraft for the best interest of both races. 
Impress him continually with the idea ol his 
unfitness lor tlie ballot "an.i his pi-oper place 
on election day away from the polls. 

[Here the hammer fell.] 

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gen- 
tleman lias expired. 

Mr. SAVAGE. I mov-i that his time be 
extended. 

Mr. HALE. 1 hope that another hour 
may be given him. 

The CHAIRMAN. That will be the effect 
of an indefinite extension, to which the Chair 
hears no objection. 

Mr. GARFIELD. 1 could Jill many col- 
umns of our Record with evidences" like 
those above quoted from the gentleman's 
own State. In the light of this testimony, 
is it possible for us to believe that the trans- 
formation had occurred in the gentieman'8 
own State in the election of that Legisla- 
ture tliat made him a Senator ? 

If the testimony of the Democratic press 
of Mi.^sissippi is to be credited, tlie latf elec- 
tion in tile State of Mississippi was tainted 
with fraud and managed by intimidation 
unparalled by anything in our recent politi- 
cal history. Let the gentleman explain this 
striking fact : Tliere are many thousand 
more colored than white voters in the Stau? 
of Mississippi, in the election of 1873 the 
Republican party had 22,970' m.tjoritv: in 
the election last autumn the Democratic 
party had a majority of 30.922. How came 
this change oi more than r>3,t'UUin the short 
space o( two years, if there w.as a free and 
uncoerced vote of tlie electors of that State ? 

The President of the United States has sent 



n 



sPEEcn OP nots. James a. qarfield. 



to the St'nate a Iftter addressed by him to 
Oovernor Chamberlain, under date of July 26, 
IhTii, troin which I read a few words of high 
official authority bearing upon the point I 
am now discussing, lie says : 

The scene at Hamburg, as cruel, bloocl- 
tliir»ly, wiiiitoii, unprovoked, and as uncalled 
for ud il was, is only a r<.;putilioii of tlie course 
that lias hci-n iiuVsned In other Soulliern 
SiuU's wiiliin the hut few years, notably in 
Mississippi anil Louisiana. Mississippi is gov- 
erned to-day by ofllcials chosen through fraud 
anil violence such aswonkl scarcely be accreil- 
ilcd to savagjs, much less to a civilized and 
Christian people. How long these things are 
to com luuo or \v hal is to be the linal remedy 
thetireai Uiilerof the universe only knows; 
but 1 h.ivean abiding faith that the remedy 
will coMU', and come speeilily, and I earnestly 
hope that it will come peacefully. There has 
never ^)^^^•n a desire on the part of the North 
to humiliate the Son li. Nothing is claimed 
or one State that is not freely accorded to all 
at hers, unless it may be therigbtto kill ne- 
groes and Itepnblicans without fearof pun- 
Uhmentand without loss of caste or reputa- 
tion. This has seemed to bea urivilege claim- 
eil by a few States. 

But it is aside from my purpose to go into 
the question of the validity of the late elec- 
tiou iu Mississippi. That subject is being 
investigated by a committee of the Senate, 
dnd I shall be surprised if, from the evidence 
they have takeu, they do not concur in the 
opiuiou I have expressed. 1 desire gentle- 
men to remember that the great question I 
am discussiug is, had the great transforma- 
tion taken place among the gentleman's 
constituents in the late autumn of 1875 ? 

The answer of his own people is over- 
whelmingly in the negative. 

I now ask, had the transformation oc- 
curred in the winter and spring of the pres- 
ent year ? 

I hold in my hand the report of an ad- 
dress of Rev. Taylor Martin, of Charlotte, 
North Carolina, the town to which Congress 
lately gave a mint building to be used for 
school purposes. The address was made 
on Decoration Day, May 5, 1876. 1 quote : 

The South is to-day ruled over By the miser- 
able thrall of Vankeei-lom ; but they cannot 
muzzle our chivalry and patriotic devotion to 
the "lost cause." We have fought for our 
rights, but in God's dispensation we are van- 
quislied, but not «owed. Slaverj- wasadivine 
institution, and we must have that institu- 
tion or the South will ever be bankrupt. 
They speak of our cause as the "lost cause." 
If so", shall it be lost forever? No ! a new gen- 
eration has sprung up, and at a not far dis- 
tant day there will be '-stars and bars" float- 
ing proudly over oursunny South. In the next 
political campaign we must,even if in the mi- 
nority, support a Southern man who will build 
U|) our interests and hurl the Yankee pick- 
pockets from our midst. Weareto-ilay unitei.1 
to the puritanical host by an artificial tie ; 
but we are a distinct people, and (iod and the 
ri'.<ht will enable us to show to the world the 
truth and thee'inity of our claims. Our states- 
men now In Congress are thr; cream of tiiat 
budy, andare the only element that reflects 
credit on the United States. Is it not better 
to hang on lo the "lost cause" than to stay in 
a government of corruption? 

Mr. YE.\TES. With the consent of the 
gentleman from Ohio, I want to state tha-t I 



have seen under the signature of the gen- 
tleman from whom he has just quoted a 
statement denying in tola every word of 
what has just been read ; a?-d a number of 
gentlemen who heard the speech certify that 
the quotation is false iu every particular. 

Mr. GARFIELD. If that be the fact I will 
cheerfully strike the extract from my speech. 
I never before heard it authentically denied. 

Mr. YEATES. There is no doubt of the 
correctness of my statement. 

Mr. GARFIELD. Let the extract and the 
denial stand together. But, sir, I will quote 
a recent utterance of public opinion, the 
authenticity of which I am quite sure no 
gentleman will deny. They will neither 
deny the ability nor the prominence of 
Robert Toombs, of Georgia, formerly a Sen- 
ator and a Secretary of the Treasury. On 
the 25th of .January, 1876, he addressed the 
Legislature of Georgia by invitation ; and 
the following extract from that speech will 
show how far the transformation has taken 
place in him and in his followers : 

We got a good many honest fellows into the 
first LiCgislatnre, but 1 will tell you how we 
got them there. 1 will tell you the truth. 
The newspapers won't tell it to you. We got 
them there by currying the black vote by in- 
timidation and bribery, and 1 helped to do it! 
1 would have scorned the people if they had 
not done it! And I will buy them as long as 
they put beasts to go to the ballot-box ! No 
man should be given the elective franchise 
wlio has not the intelligence to use it prop- 
erly. The rogue should not have it, for Gov 
ernment is made to punish him ; the fool 
should not have it, for Government is made 
to take care of him ! Now, these miserabh- 
wretches— the Yankees— have injected five 
millions of savages into the stonnicli of our 
body-politic, and the man who says he accepts 
negro sutTrage. 1 say, accursed be hel I will 
accept everything; 1 will accept Grant and 
empire before 1 will accept such a Uemocrat ! 
The poor, ignorant negro— talk of him govern- 
ing you and me ! It takes the highest order 
of intellect to govern the people, ami tliese 
poor wretches talk of governing us I 'Why, 
they can't perpetuate their own negro power. 
In the countries where they were in the ma- 
jority they dill not pi'eserve their power and 
perpetuate their rule. My remeily helpeil us 
to break that up. We carried theih with us by 
bribery and intimidation. 1 advised it and 
paid my money for it ! You all know it, but 
won't say it. Itut 1 will say it, for 1 fear no 
man, and am prepared to render an account 
to none but the Great Judge, before whom I 
must appear in a few years, l'«r my enemies 
have thought my services to my country so 
great that they have done me the honor to ex- 
clude me from again serving my people. I 
contest that honor with our cnief, Mr. Uavis. 
1 am just as good as he is, and he is no better 
than 1 am. 1 ilemaml that they shaUj|)lace me 
beside him. 1 thank them for it. It is verj 
few things that 1 nave to thank them for, but 
1 do thank them for that. 

In view of the testimony I have offered, 
we must wait for an answer to the question, 
when and where did the transformation oc- 
cur ? It occurred long ago in the philosophi- 
cal and patriotic heart and mind of the gen- 
tleman from Mississippi ; but has it occurred 
in the majority of the eleven millions who 
joined with him to destroy the Union, to 



fiPEECn OP HON. JAMES A. OARFIEIJ>. 



11 



y^Tpetuate slavery, to defend the cause that 
1^ now " lost f" 

Had it occurred last week in the town of 
Meridian, in me gentleman's own State? 1 
quote from tL" Meridian Mercury of July 29, 
lb7t): 

We lieiird Lamar's Scooha speed), and while 
Ills t rut li lo his hcloveil South, purhiips, tliinied 
out a llllie uiol'e t hail cuinuKni, we rt-niurkcd 
nothing iLieou.sisltMit with hU olhrr spet'clies 
we hail lu-ai(l or reail of. Thi^ iiiorniug ot his 
ariival hc'ro tlu! Mercury conlahicti a sliai'p 
fling at hiui about the ^iuuMl^^ oration, and 
that night, at I lie eoul■t-ll<m^s(•, ho venturcil lo 
Chastise us sharply tor it in the house of our 
frieutls, ami was hoisierously applauded. We 
consoled ourself that i he applause might 
have Ijcen moi-e in eoiiipliineiit to the e.xeel- 
lence of thi^ Oiatory than in satisfaction at 
our • asligatioii. Wehad our rcvcngi^ though, 
111 taking which we iuauguratcd tiie policy ol 
the canvass in spite of hiui which carried the 
State like a i>iuirie on lire. He and others wlio 
wanted to dross uii in a iiici^ starched and 
Ironed white shirt that would shame the 
bloody shirt, established a laundry at Jack- 
son oil the 4th of August, and a great many 
patronized it and came out in snowy white 
fronts to present themselves creditably before 
the Northern public sentiment. In their party 
pow-wow of lliat tlay, disregarding the deirp 
anUer-currenlof publlcoinnioii.thejMlcclared 
by formal resolution against the White Line 
policy. 

The iMercnry h.ad sounded tlie depths of that 
under-current, ami we ki.ew it wouid not do. 
In heart we felt with the platfoi m, but our 
judgment assured Us that the canvass niu.>t 
be lost on ii,an<l that to inactice it weri- a latal 
error. We denounced tin; platform upon the 
instant, and took what care we could that 
Lamau'S speeches upon his national reputa- 
tion should not ruin our canvass. We calletl 
upon the people to "step across the platform" 
which denamed it, and form the W lilte Line 
beyond it. The summons was music to their 
ears, and the unconcjuered ami uucoiuiuer- 
able Saxon race of Mississippi rallied to the 
slogan. 
w * * * * * * * * * * 

We have got the Stat* ; we know how we 
got it; we know to keep it; and we are going 
to keep it without reganl torace or numerical 
tnajority. 

Mr. Chairman, after the facts I have cited, 
am I not warranted in raising a grave doubt 
whether the transformation occurred at all 
except in a few patriotic and philosophic 
minds ? The light gleams first on the moun- 
tain peaks ; but shadows and darkness linger 
in the valley. It is in the valley masses of 
those lately in rebellion that the light of 
this heautiful philosophy, which I honor, 
has not penetrated. Is it safe* to with- 
hold from them the custody aj-i2 supreme 
control of the precious treasuiit of the Re- 
public until the midday sun of i berty, jus- 
tice, and equal laws shall shine upon them 
with unclouded ray ? 

In view of all the facts, considering the 
centuries of influence that brought on the 
great struggle, is it not reasonable to sup- 
pose that it will require yet more time to 
effect the great transformation. Did not 
the distinguished gentleman from Massa- 
chusetts [Mr. George V. Hoar] sum up the 
case fairly and truthfully when he said of 
the South, in his Louisiana report of 1874 : 



They submitted to the national nnthorlty, 
not because they would, but \)fciiuhC tlicy 
unixt riiry abandoiifil the doct lino of Siaie 
sovereignty, which ih' y had clulmeil made 
tiiflr duly to lliidr Slates imiainount to that 
• luelothc nation III case of conlllct, not bo 
cause Ihoy would, but bie^inse I hoy must. 
They subiiiltted to the conxl llir lonal mond- 
iiieirts which rohdorod ihoir foriinr slaves 
their cfiuals in all political right.-., not becuuse 
they wcMild, bill bocau»e tlioy must. Tho pas 
sioiis wnlcli led lo the war the passions which 
the war excited, were left iinlamodHiid un- 
checked, except to 'ar as iholr cthlbUiou was 
restrained by the arm of power. 

The gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. La- 
mar] says there is no possibility that the 
South will again control national atJairs, if 
the Democracy be placed again in power. 
How is this ? We are told that the South 
will vote a- a unit for Tilden and Hendricks. 
Suppose those gentlt^meii also carry New 
York and Indiana. Does the gentleman be- 
lieve that a Northern minority of the De- 
mocracy will control the Administration f 
Impossible. But if they did, would it better 
the case ? 

Let me put the question in another form. 
Suppose, gentlemen of the South, you had 
won the victory in the war; that you had 
captured Washington, and Gettysburg, and 
Philadelphia, and New York ; and we of the 
North, defeated and conquered, had lain 
prostrate at your feet. Do you believe that 
by this time you would be ready and will- 
ing to intrust to us--our Garrisons, our Phil- 
lipses, and our Wades, and the great array 
of those who were the leaders of our thoughl 
— to intrust to us the fruits of your victory, 
the enforcement of your doctrines of State 
sovereignty and the work of extending the 
domain of slavery ? Do you think so ? And 
if not, will you not pardon us when wf^ tell 
you that we are not quite ready to trust the 
precious results of the nation's vijtory in 
your hands? Let it be constantly borne in 
mind that I am not debating a question of 
equal rights and privileges witliiu the Union, 
but whether those who so lately sought to 
destroy it ought to be chosen to control its 
destiny for the next four years. 

I hope my public life has given proof that 
I do not cherish a spirit of malice or bitter- 
ness toward the South. Perhaps they will 
say I have no right to advise them ; but at 
the risk of being considered impertinent I 
will express my conviction that the bane of 
the Southern people, for the last twenty five 
years, has been that they have trusted the 
advice of the Democratic party. The very 
remedy which the geutleman from Missis- 
sippi offers for the ills of his people has 
been and still is their bane. The Demo- 
cratic party has been the evil genius of the 
South in all these years. They yielded their 
own cousciences to you on the slavery ques- 
tion, and led you to believe that the North 
would always yield. They made you believe 
we would not "tight to save the Uniou. They 
made you believe that if we ever dared to 



12 



8PKK0H OP HON. JAMKS A. 'JARlTIELl). 



cross the Potomac or the Ohio to put down 
your rebellion we could only do so across 
the dead bodies of niauy hundred thousands 
of Northern Democrats. Tliey made you 
believe that the war would begin in the 
i<treets of our Northern cities ; that we were 
a community of shop-keepers, of sordid 
money-getters, and would not stand against 
your tiery chivalry. You thought us cold, 
hIow, lethargic ; and in some respects we are. 
There are some differences between us that 
t>pring from origin and influences of climate; 
dilferencea not unlike the description of the 
poet, that — 

Bria;ht and tierce aiirt fickle Is the South ; 
And dark and true and tender Is the North; 

differences that kept us from a good under- 
stand ing. 

You thought that our coldness, our slow- 
ness, indicated a lack of spirit and of patriot- 
ism, and you were encouraged in that belief by 
most of the Northern Democracy; but not by 
all. They warned you at Charleston in 1860. 

And when the great hour struck, there 
were many noble Democrats in the North 
who lifted the flag of the Union far above 
the flag of party ; but there was a residuum 
of Democracy, called in the slang of the 
time •' Copperheads," who were your evil 
genius from the beginning of the war till its 
close, and ever since. Some of them sat in 
these seats, and never rejoiced when we won 
a victory, and never grieved when we lost 
one. They were the men who sent their Val- 
landighams to give counsel and encourage- 
ment to your rebellion and to buoy you up 
with false hope, that at last you would con- 
quer by the aid of their treachery. I honor 
you, gentlemen of the South, ten thousand 
times more than i honor such Democrats of 
tlie North. 

I said they were your evil genius. Why, in 
ISij-t. when we were almost at the culminating 
point of the war, their Vallandighams and 
Tildens (and botii of these men were on the 
committee of resolutions) uttered the dec- 
laration, as the voice of the Democracy, that 
the experiment of war to preserve the Union 
wap a failure, and that hostilities should 
oease. They asked us to sound the recall 
on our bugles; to callour conquering armies 
back from the contest, and trust to their 
machinations to save their party at the ex- 
pense of a broken and ruined country. Brave 
soldiers of the lost cause, did you not, even 
in that hoar of peril, in your heart of hearts, 
loatlie them with supremest scorn ? But 
for their treacliery at Chicago the war might 
have ended and a hundred tliousand precious 
lives been saved. But your evil genius pur- 
sued you, and the war went on. And later, 
when you would have accepted the constitu- 
tional amendment and restoration without 
universal sulFrage the same evil genius held 
you back. In 1868 it still deceived you. In 
1872 it led you into 



A gulf profound as that f^&rbonian bog 
Betwixt Diimiata and Mount Casius old. 
Where armies whole liave sunk. 

Let not the eloquence of th^t gentleman 
from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar] lure yoi again 
to its brink. 

Mr. Chairman, it is now time to iuqcire a.r 
to the fitness of this Democratic party to take 
control of our great nation and its vast and 
important interests for the next four years. 
I put tlie question to the gentleman from 
Mississippi [M'-. Lamar ] what has the Demo- 
cratic party donw to merit that great trust ' 
He tried to show in what respects it would 
noi be dangerous. I ask him to show in 
what it would be safe. I affirm, and I be- 
lieve I do not misrepresent the great Demo- 
cratic party, that in the last sixteen years 
they have not advanced one great national 
idea that is not to-day exploded and as dead 
as Julius Casar. And if any Democrat here 
will rise and name a great national doctrine 
his party has advanced, within that timCj 
that is now alive and believed in, 1 will yield 
to hear him. [A pause.] In default of an 
answer I will attempt to prove my negative. 

What were the great central doctrines o.* 
the Democratic party in the Presidential 
struggle of 1860 ? The followers of Breck- 
inridge said slavery had a right to go wher- 
ever the Constitution goes. Do you believe 
that to-day ? Is there a man on this conti 
neut who holds that doctrine to-day ? Noi 
one. That doctrine is dead and buried. The 
other wing of the Democracy held that slav- 
ery might be established in the Territories 
if the people wanted it. Does anybody hold 
that doctrine to-day ? Dead, absolutely dead. 

Come down to 18G4. Your party, under 
the lead of Tilden and Vallandigham, de- 
clared the experiment of war to save the 
Union was a failure. Do /ou believe tlial 
doctrine to-day ';' Tiiat doctrine was shot to 
death by the guns of Fairagut at Mobikv 
and driven, in a tempest of fire, from the vat 
ley of the Shenandoah, by Sheridan, less 
than a mouth after its birth at Chicago. 

Come down to 1868. You declared the 
constitutional amendment revolutionary and 
void. Does any man on this floor say so to- 
day t If so, let him rise and declare it. 

Do you believe in the doctrine ot the 
Broadhead letter of 1868, that the so-called 
constitutional amendments should be disre- 
garded? No; the gentleman from Missis- 
sippi accepts the results of the war 1 The 
Democratic doctrine of 1868 is dead I 

1 walk across that Democratic camping- 
ground as in a grave-yard. Under my feet 
resound the hollow echoes of the dead. 
There lies slavery, a black marble column 
at the head of its grave, on which I read : 
Died in the flames of the civil war; loved in 
its life; lamented in its death; followed to its 
bier by its only mourner, the Democratic 
party, but dead! And here is a double 
grave • Sacred to the memory of squatter 



SPKECH OP HON. JAMES A. QARPIELD. 



la 



sovereignty. Died iu the campaign of 1860. 
On the reverse side : Sacred to tbe memory 
of Dred Sooltaud tlie Breckinridge doctrine. 
Both dead at the liands ol" Abraham Lincoln. 
And here a monument of brimstone : Sacred 
to the memory of tlie rebellion; the war 
against it is a failure; Tilden et Vallandif/ham 
f'ecirmit, A. D. 1^64. Dead on the field of 
battle; shot to death by the million guns of 
the Republic. The doctrine of secession; of 
State sovereignty. Dead. Expired in the 
flames of civil war, amid the blazing rafters 
of the Confederacy, except that the modern 
^neas, fleeing out of tlie flames of that ruin, 
bears on his back another Auchises of State 
sovereignty, and brims it here in the person 
of the honorable gentleman fiom the Appo- 
mattox: district of Virginia, [Mr. Tltckek.] 
[Laughter.] All else is dead. 

Now, gentlemen, are you sad, are you 
sorry for these deaths ? Are you not glad 
that secession is dead ? that slavery is dead? 
that squatter sovereignty is dead ? that the 
doctrine of the failure of the war is dead ? 
Then you are glad that you were outvoted 
in 1860, in 1864, in 1868, and in 1872. If 
you have tears to shed over these losses, 
slied them in the grave-yard, but not in this 
House of living men. I know that many a 
Southern man rejoices that these issues are 
dead. The gentleman from Mississippi has 
clothed his joy with eloquence. 

Now, gentlemen, if you yourselves are 
glad that you have suflered defeat during 
the last sixteen years, will you not be 
equally glad when you sutler defeat next 
November? [Laughter.] But pardori that 
remark; I regret it ; 1 would use no bravado. 

Now, gentlemen, come with me for a mo- 
ment into the camp of the ]\epublican party 
and review its career. Our central doctrine 
in 18C0 was that slavery should never ex- 
tend itself over another foot of American 
soil. Is that doctrine dead ? It is folded 
away like a victorious banner; its truth ks 
alive forevermore on this continent. In 1864 
we declared that wo would put down die re- 
bellion and secession. And that doctrine 
lives and will live when the second Centen- 
nial has arrived I Freedom, national, uni- 
versal, and perpetual — our gn-at constitu- 
tional aniendments, are they alive or dead ? 
Alive, thank the God that shields both lib- 
erty and Union. And our national credit, 
saved from the assaults of IVndleton; saved 
from the as-aults of those who struck it later, 
rising higher and higher at home and abroad; 
and only now in doubt lest its chief, its only 
enemy, the Democracy, should triumph iu 
November. 

Mr. Chairman, ought tho Republican party 
to surrender its truncheon of command to 
the Democracy ? The gentleman from Missis- 
sippi says, if this were England the Ministry 
would go out in twenty-four hours with such 
a state of things as we have here. Ah, yes! 
that is an ordinary case of change of a^iminis- 



tration. But if thin were England what would 
she have done at thr end of the war ? Eng 
land made one sui-h mistake as the gentleman 
asks this fonnti'v to make when she threw 
away thf achievements of tlie gramlest man 
tliat ever troil lier highway of jtower. Oliver 
Cromwell had dverturned the thronn of des 
potie power and had lifted his country to a 
plai'.e of masterful greatness among the na- 
tions of the e.arth; and when, after his death, 
his great si'epter was tran.-Nferred to a weak, 
though not unlineal, hand, his country, in 
a moment of reactionary blindness, brout^ht 
back the Stuarts. Eui^land did not recover 
from that folly until, in l(!8!t. the Prince of 
Orange di-ove from her island the last of that 
weak and wicked line. Did she afterward 
repeat the blunder ? 

For more than fifty years pretenders were 
seeking the tiirone, and the wars on her 
coast, in Scotland and in Ireland, threatened 
the overthrow ot the new dynasty and the 
disruption of the empire. But the solid 
phlegm, the magniflcent pluck, the round- 
about common sense of Englishmen steadied 
the throne till the cause of tho Stuarts was 
<lead. They did not change as soon as the 
battle was over and let the Stuarts come 
back to power. 

And how was it in our own country when 
our fathers had triumphed iu the war of tho 
Revolution ? When the victory was won, 
did they open their arms to the loyalists, as 
they called themselves, or tories, as our 
fathers called them ? Did they invite them 
back ? Not one. They Cv^ntiscated their 
lands. The States passed decrees that no 
tory should live on our soil. And when 
they were too poor to take themselves away, 
our fathers, burdened as the young nation 
was with debt, raised the money to trausport 
the tories beyond seas or across the Canada 
border. They went to England, to France, 
to Nova Scotia, to New Brunswick, and es 
pecially to Halifax; ;ind that town was such 
a resort for tiiem that it became the swear- 
word of our boyhood. 'Go to Halifax" was 
a substitute for a more impious, but not 
more opprobrious expression. The presence 
of lories made it opprobrious. 

Now I do not refer to this as an example 
which we ought to follow. 0, no. We live 
iu a milder era, in an age softened by the 
more genial influence of Christian civiliza- 
tion. Witness the sixty-one men who fought 
against us in the late war. and who are 
now sitting in this and the other Chamber 
of Congress, Every one of them is here 
because a magnanimous nation freely voted 
that they might come; and they are welcome. 
Only please do not say tlial you are just now 
especially fitted to rule the Republic, and to 
be the apostles of liberty and of bles.->iugs to 
the colored race. 

Gentlemen, the North has been asked, 
these many years, to regard tlm sensibilities 
of the South. We have beeu told that you 



u 



SPEECH OF HON. JAMEC V. GARFIELD. 



were brave and sensitive men, and that we 
ought not to throw fire-brauds among you. 
Most of our people have treated you with 
judtice and maguauimity. In some things 
we have giveu you just cause for complaint; 
but 1 want to remind you that the North also 
has sensibilities to be regarded. The ideas 
which they cherish and for which tliey 
fought triumphed in the highest court, the 
court of last resort, the field of battle. Our 
people intend to abide by that verdict and 
to enforce the mandate. They rejoice at 
every evidence of acquiescence. They look 
forward to the day when the distinctions of 
Nortii and South shall have melted away in 
the grander sentiment of nationality. But 
they do not think it is yet safe to place the 
control of this great work in your hands. 
In the hands of some of you they would be 
safe, perfectly safe; but to tne hands of the 
united South, joined with the most reaction- 
ary elements of the Northern Democracy, our 
people will not yet surrender theGovernment. 

I am aware that there is a general dispo- 
sition "to let by-gones be by-gones," and to 
judge of parlies and of men, not by what 
they have been, but by what they are and 
what they propose. 

That view is partly just and partly erron- 
eous. It is just and wise to bury resent- 
ments and animosities. It is erroneous in 
♦his, that parties have an organic life and 
spirit of their own — an individuality and 
.character which outlive the men who com- 
pose them; and the spirit and traditions of 
a party should be considered in determining 
their fitness for managing the affairs of a 
nation. For this purpose I have reviewed 
the hi-tory of the Democratic party. 

I have no disposition nor would it be just 
to shield the Republican party from fair and 
searching criticism. It has been called to 
meet questions novel and most difficult. It 
has made many mistakes. It has stumbled 
and blundered ; has had some bad men in it; 
has sullered from the corruptions incident to 
the period following a grsat war ; and it has 
suffered rebuke and partial defeat in conse- 
quence. But has it been singular and alone 
in these respects ? With all its faults, I 
fearlessly challenge gentlemen to compare 
^it with any party known to our polities. 
lias the gentleman shown that the Demo- 
cratic party is iis superior either in virtue 
or intelligence? Ooutlemen, the country 
has been testing your qualities during the 
last eight mouths. The people gave you a 
probationary trial by putting you in con- 
trol of this llouse. When you came here, 
in December last, the same distinguished 
gentleman to whom I am replying addressed 
you on the evening of your first caucus in 
these words : 

Tin re has lieon for some time In the public 
mliiti a convicilo i pre ound and all-porvadiug 
that tuo civil s'Tv'se )f lUe country has not 
been (liroclod I'ro a coiisi'Jcnittons of public 
good, ijut from iLjse of party prortt, and for 



currupt. selfish, and unpatriotic designs. Tno 
pnoplo deuiiiiid at our hands a, sweeping and 
thorodglj reform, wiiicU shall be conducted 
In a spirit that will secure thea)ipointment to 
places of trust and responsibi(ity of the hon- 
est, the experienced, and tlie capable. 

That is sound doctrine; and I have advo- 
cated it here and elsewhere during the 
last eight years. I remind him that the per- 
nicious doctrine that " to the victors belong 
the spoils," is of Desaocratic origin ; that 
nearly half a century of Democratic tradition 
and practice has fastened it upon the coun- 
try. We found it, and have been cursed by 
it ever since ; and though some efforts have 
been made to reform it, the good work is 
hardly begun. When, therefore, the gen- 
tleman from Mississippi, [Mr. Lamar,] as 
chairman of the Democratic caucus, at the 
opening of the session, announced the doc- 
trine I have quoted, we had reason to hope 
that a new era of vil service had dawned 
upon the Capitol. But what performance 
has followed his high-sounding proclama- 
tion ? No sooner did this reforming party 
take possession of this House than it began 
the most wholesale, sweeping changes of 
officials, from the highest to the humblest 
employees of the llouse, that has been 
known in our history. Many of these offi- 
cers had come to us from our Democratic 
predecessors; but they were almost all dis- 
missed to give place to hungry partisans. 
Sixty-seven Union soldiers, who were faith- 
fully doing their duties here, were turned 
out, and among those who filled their places 
were forty-seven rebel soldiers. 

Mr. WILLIS. May I inquire how many 
Union soldiers were put in office? 

Mr. GARFIELD. I do not know the pre- 
cise number. 

Mr. WILLIS. If the gentleman will in- 
stitute a comparison he will find that it is 
decidedly favorable to the Democratic party 
so far as patriotism and favoritism to Union 
soldiers is concerned. 

Mr. GARFIELD. The facts do not bear 
the gentleman out in his statement. This 
is the practice which followed your profes- 
sions of civil-servfce reform. 

Mr. HOLM AN. As a matter of justice and 
fair play the gentleman from Ohio certainly 
knows and should admit that a large num- 
ber of disabled soldiers who are Republicans 
are still holding offices in this House. 

Mr. CONGER. I object to the gentleman 
from Indiana interrupting the gentleman 
from Ohio. Let the gentlemen opposite give 
our side an opportunity to be heard for once. 

Mr. GARFIELD. 1 am almost through, 
and will soon yield the lloor. 

In answer to the gentleman from Indiana, 
I understand that a considerable number of 
Democratic Union soldiers were appointed ; 
but I w.as discussiugcivil-service reform and 
the declaration of the gentleman from Mis- 
sissippi [Mr. Lamar] that appointments to 
office should not be used as party rewards. 



SPEECH OF nON. JAMES A. OARFIELD. 



16 



I desire to glance for a moment now at the 
career of this Uouae and at what tliey have 
done and omitted to do. Pasiiug by tlieir 
treatment of contested-election cases, their 
appointment of officers, employes, and com- 
mittee-clerks who have reflected no credit 
upon the House, I desire to ask what valua- 
ble work of general legislation has this 
House accomplished ? 

We hail hardly been here a month, when, 
among the first thiugs demanded was that 
in disregard of the deep feelings of the 
Northern people, it was proposed to crown 
Jefferson Davis with fall and free amnesty, 
notwithstanding he had contemptuously de- 
clared he never would ask for it; and this was 
to be done, or no amnesty was to be granted 
to any one. And when we objected because 
he was the author of the unutterable atro- 
cities of Libby and Audersonville prisons, 
the debate which followed disclosed the 
spirit and temper of the dominant party. 

W'e were hardly in our seats when the 
gentlemen from Virginia [Mr. Tockkr] 
brought in a bill to repeal a statute of 1866 
which no Democrat had before that proposed 
to disturb, so far as I know; a statute which 
provided that no man who voluntarily went 
into the rebellion against the Union should 
ever hold a commission in our Army or 
Navy. And a Democrat from my own State, 
[Mr. Banni.n'o,] the chairman of the Com- 
mitee on Military Aflfairs, became the cham- 
pion of that bill; and this Uouse passed it. 

Again, we had passed a law to protect the 
sanctity and safety of the ballot in national 
elections, so that the horrors of theKu-Klux 
and the white-linisms should not run riot at 
the polls, and among the earliest acts of this 
House was a clause added to one of the ap- 
propriation bills to repeal the election law; 
and to effect that repeal they kept up the 
struggle lately under the fierce rays of the 
dog-star. They have been compelled by a 
Republican Senate to abandon the attempt. 

Again, what have they neglected ? Early 
in the session, indeed in the first days of it, 
a proposition was made, introduced by the 
gentleman from Maine, [Mr. Blaine,] so to 
amend the Constitution as to remove forever 
from the party politics of the country the 
vexed and dangerous question of church 
and state by preventing the use of the school 
funds for sectarian purposes. That amend- 
ment was sent to the Committee on the Judi- 
ciary to sleep, perhaps to die; for it is said to 
have been three times voted down in that 
committee. 

Again, the Secretary of the Treasury of- 
ficially informed us that his power was ex- 
hausted further to refund the debt; and that 
if we would give him the requisite authority 
he could refund four or five hundred millions 
more at so favorable a rate as to save to the 
Treasury at least 1 per cent, per annum of 
the whole amount. The Senate passed the 
bill more than six mouths ago, but this 
House has taken no action upon it. 



Our revenues have been threatene<i with 
a deficit and our industries have been shaken 
with alarm by bills reported to the House 
but never been brought to a vote; for ex- 
ample, tlie tariff bill, floating lazily upon the 
stagnant waters of the House, 

As lcll« lis a i);ilnteil ship 

Upon II piiiril<-<l ocean— 

a promise to free-traders, a threat of danger 
to manufacturers, but with no prospect or 
purpose of acting upon it. 

And the Government has been crippled by 
the withholding of necessary appropria- 
tions; witliheld, as I do not hesitate to say, 
for the [lurpose of making political capital 
at the coming election, in which the gentle- 
man from Mississippi desires his party to 
succeed in the name of honesty and reform. 
His colleague was frank enough to declare 
that ho wanted to reduce the general appro- 
priations, so as to have money enough to 
devote to some scheme for his section, such 
as the cotton claims and the Southern Pacific 
railroad. 

But party necessity has held many waiting 
schemes and claims in leash. They are 
anchored in the lobbies and committee-rooms 
of this Uouse, till the election is over. 
There is the bill to refund the cotton tax to 
the amount of $ !0,00(),0U0, waiting to be 
launched, when the election is over. A 
subsidy of a hundred millions upstairs 
(Pacific railroad committee-room) is waiting 
to come down upon us for the Southern 
Pacific railroad, when the election is over. 
There are $38,000,000 of private claims, 
Southern claims, war claims, waiting to burst 
up from the cemmittee-rooms belo,v stairs. 
when the election is over. 

While these things surround ns; while 
the very earth shakes with the tramp of the 
advancing army of schemers, who are com- 
ing "with the Constitution and an appropri- 
ation," the gentleman from Mississippi 
thinks that'as a measure of reform the Demo- 
cratic party ought at once to be brought 
! back into power I 

Meanwhile what has been the chief em- 
i ployment of this House ? It has divided 
itself in a score of police courts, in the hope 
of finding corruption. Like those insects 
that feed upon sores, it has hoped to live 
-and thrive upon the corruption of others. 
Like that scavenger of the air, the carrion 
bird that buries its beak in the rotton car- 
cass, so the Democratic party seeks to fatten 
on the refuse which is hero and there thrown 
out of the public service. 

This Uouse has adopted eighty-three re- 
solutions of investigation, besides a It-gion of 
resolutions of inquiry of the several Depart- 
ments. Twenty-five standing committees, 
and eight select committees, up to the 
20th of June, in all thirty-three com- 
mittees, have been raking all the slums 
of the nation, to find, if possible, some 
savory morsel with wliioh to impregnate the 
air during the coming election. 



16 



SPEECH OF HON. JAMES A. GARFIELD. 



Aud what have they found ? Has any 
one of these committees found that a single 
dollar lias been stolen from the Treasury of 



the United States ? If so. let them declare 
it. Why, sir, the Republican party for the 
last three years has been investigating its 
own Administration far more effectually 
than you have investigated it. It has had 
uot only the courage of its opinions, but the 
courage to punish its own rascals 

But, gentlemen, after all that may be said 
of corruptions and wrong-doing, do you 
show, on that grouiui, any good reason why 
the Republican party should surrender the 
Grovernmeut to the Democracy ? Would it 
be belter ? It is a matter of official record 
that the Treasury suffered a far greater per- 
centage of loss, by mismanagement and de- 
falcation, under your administration than it 
has suffered under ours. 

In an official letter to the Senate, under 
date of June 10, 1876, the Secretary of the 
Treasury copie- from his records the aggre- 
gate losses by defalcations and the loss per 
$1,0 )0 in each period of four, years sines 
1834 in all tiie Departments and Bureaus of 
the Government. Without quoti ug the table 
at length, the grand aggre^ifte stands thus : 
From January 1, 1834. to July 1. 1S()1, the 
total disbursements of the Government were 
$l,3o9,977,5 12.52; the total defalcations were 
.$12, 3dl, 722.91; or a loss of $9. 02 to the $1,000. 
From July 1, 1861, to July 1, 1875, the 
total disbursements were §12,56 ;,892,56U.- 
o3; the total defalcations were -$9,905,205.37; 
or a loss of twenty-six cents to tlie §1,0110. 
In the latter period the disbursements were 
nearly ten times as great as i^ the former, 
aud the defalcations one-third less. 

Is this country so given over to corruption 
as the gentleman from Mississippi suggests ? 
I will answer by quoting two distinguished 
witnesses. In his able speech on the im- 
peachment trial, oue of the Demovratic man- 
agers, the gentleman from New York, [Mr. 
LoKU,] said : 

Seuatufs, 1 am one of ttiose who believe in 
progress. 1 believe that this age is 'lie b(!«t 
age which the sun has ever slioue upon ; 1 bn- 
likjve ihcre is more of religion, more of hu- 
manity, moio of love, more of eh irity In this 
age than ia any age that has preceded it. ♦ * 

There is now a higher aud healthier senti- 
ment than in any toriuer agi;. Men are held 
roolUci t! responsibilities now, thank God, that 
they never were before. Tin- timi^ has been 
in t he recoUcciioii of many of you when a \3yr- 
sou thought he \nvl the right to use his oUioial 
nosili )u lor hi-4 0wna'lvauta'.ie ; but that time 
basgoneby, andiifjood de 1' of what we see aud 
hear which leads agreat m.iny so mournt'nlly 
tosaylhatlbe agtiis s^omg baclvwar<l nid we 
are reci;ding to b.irbaiiam". very much which 
occasions Lhi- a |)i)a rent increajteofwronsiarises 
from the higher d'imands ol a greater civili- 
Ztttio , ironi the, higher plane of an enlight- 
ened people. 

Now, 1 ask the Cleric to read a paragraph 
which I have marked from the centennial 
address of Rev. Ur. Storrs, a mau lit to be 
the teacher of his race. 

The Clerk read as follows ; 



I scout the thought Miat w- as a people aie worumy uoue. Ll^oad aud continued ap- 
I'oi-ae thau our tuiherb. Jouu Ailums. afc the ' plauiie.] 



head of the War Department In J776 wrote 
bitter lamencs of the corruption wliich ex- 
isted in even that infant age of th- Kcpublic, 
and of the spirit of veuaiity, rHpacirms and 
insatiable, which was then the most alarming 
enemv of America. Me declared hlmKelf 
ashamed of the af^e in which he liv d. In Jef- 
ferson's day all Federalists expected the uni- 
versal dominion of e'rench infidelity. In 
Jackson's day all Whigs thought the country 
gone to ruin already, as if Air." Biddle had had 
the entire public hope locked up in the vaults 
of his terminated bank, tn l'olk'-<day theei 
citement of the Mexican war gave lifuan I ger 
rainatiou 'O many seeds of rascality. There 
has never been a timi^, not here alone, in auy 
country, when the fierce light of incessant 
inquiry blaziii r on men m public life would 
no|. nave revealed foi-ces of evil like those we 
have seen or when the condiiuuation which 
followed the discov.u-y would hive been 
sharper. And it is among my deepest convic- 
tions that, with all which has happened to de- 
base and debauch ir, the nation at large was 
never before more mentally vigorous or mor- 
ally sound. 

Mr. GARFIELD. Now. Mr. Chairman, 
after all the fearful corruption of his time 
described by John Adams, our fathers never 
tliough it tiecessary to call the tories back to 
take charge of their newly gained liberties. 
I will close by cialling your attention again 
to the great problem before us. Over this 
vast horizon of iuterwsts North aud South, 
above all party prejudices and personal 
wrong-doing, above our battle hosts and our 
victorious cause, above all that we hoped for 
and won, aud you hoped for and lost, is the 
grand, ouward movement of the Republic to 
perpetuate its glory, to save liberty alive, 
to preserve exact and equal justice to all, to 
protect and foster all these priceless princi- 
ples, until they shall have chrystalized into 
the form of enduring law aud become in- 
wrought into the life aud the habits of our 
people. 

Aud, until these great results are accom 
plished, it is not safe to take oue step back 
ward. It is still more unsafe to trust inter- 
ests of such measurele-^s value in the hands 
of an organization whose members have 
never comprehended their epoch, have never 
been in t^ympalhy with its great movements, 
who have resisted every step of its progress, 
and whose principal function has been 

To lie in cold obstruction 
across the pathway of the nation. 

It is most unsafe of all to trust that organ- 
ization when, for the tir>t time since the war, 
it puts forward for the first and second place 
of honor aud command, men who, in our 
days of greatest danger, esteemed party 
above country, aud felt not one throb of 
patriotic ardor for the triumph of the im- 
periled Union, but from the beginning to the 
end hated the war and hated those who car- 
ried our eagles to victory. 

No, no, gentlemen ; our eulighteued and 
patriotic people will not follow such leaders 
in the rearward march. Their myriad faces 
are turned the other way ; and along their 
serried lines still riugs the cheeriui^ cry, 
"Forward ! till our great work is fully and 
worthily done 



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